Real Men

About two years ago, I worked with a comedy troupe called “This, That and the Other”. We performed an incredibly treacly song called “Love Quake”, written by the hugely talented Jose Arroyo, who has since gone on to much bigger things. It was perhaps the ultimate bad Rod McKuen ditty, and I performed it in a grotesque Paul Williams wig, singing in my best Nick Drake cum child molester breathy sigh.

Audiences liked it, but they also seemed a bit creeped out by my smarmy, androgynous persona. I guess guys aren’t comfortable accessing their inner Rip Torn or Charles Nelson Riley, and their women are just fine with that. It’s hardly news that men nowadays are unsure of their masculinity, and that women are uncertain of how they want men to behave. Uncompromising intellectual/brass balled goddess Camille Paglia herself has addressed this condition repeatedly:

“A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and it is confirmed only by other men. [...] Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all.”

Still, I’m a little suspicious of Ms Paglia, primarily because most of her stuff leads back to her favorite thesis that underneath our shiny veneer of civilization lurks a seething cauldron of biochemistry – or something like that. Anyway, I’m not disputing that
The sensitive male is a washout, and that the very nature of masculinity is elusive. But I’m more simpatico with this guy, who’s devoted a web page to, well, his dick. He may be on to something when he addresses our fear of being male:

“We are the way we are in society because we're conditioned away from true masculinity — and what is left to us is a thing often derided, abused and shamed by feminists and even 'new men': a weak shadow of true masculinity, a weak masculine self, a swaggering John Wayne macho image of immature masculinity, a chaotic and confused adolescent maleness, the acting out of violence and aggression (often against women), a masculinity that is afraid to stand up and show itself in all its glory.”

Perhaps I am that most despised of all things – the feminized male. (But I doubt that anyone can be packaged so neatly.) I tend to prefer the company of women over men, but I have many male friends. Watching sports bores me to tears to tears, but I’ve played all manner of sports throughout my life and I’ve enjoyed them thoroughly. (I became quite adept at pulling my fellow hockey players out of the water after they broke through the ice.)

Recently, I got my first pedicure. It’s a wonderful luxury, but no one tells you how damn ticklish the whole affair is. I got the giggles, and inadvertently cracked up a roomful of female Vietnamese Nail Techs – not a very butch thing to do. So I wouldn’t pretend to know what real masculinity is. But I have certainly seen plenty of the swaggering macho image of immature masculinity, and I’m fairly certain that this behavior is fueled by fear. For instance, only fear-ridden immature men would imprison children, or indulge in childish vindictiveness when the stability of the Middle East is at stake.

And only the seriously confused would choose to worship a macho ass-kicking Christ out to nail heathen heinie, a Jesus who behaves like a superhero in a summer blockbuster. Then again, the guy does have super-natural super-powers.

But enough ad hominem fun. I’m willing to admit that men are unsure of their masculinity because we deny our animal urges. I’ve heard the male-biology argument in defense of everything from infidelity to lusting after pre-teens, and I even buy the bio-stud spiel to a point. I’m just not convinced that the unsteady sands shifting under the modern male are due to fall-out from feminism, or even that questions of a man’s place in the cosmos are anything new.

This may just be a longstanding example of the human condition. All of us – men and women – walk the line between our urges and what we deem appropriate. Civilization has always been, at least in part, the ability to subsume primal urges (with all the psychic screw-ups which that process entails). Or as that swaggering stud Mick Jagger once said:

“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometime, you get what you need.”
 
¶ 4/24/2003 :: E-mail Pat